6 Ways to Achieve Dynamic Content Optimization

Your dynamic content is slow.

Dynamic content acceleration is not the solution; dynamic content optimization is.

This might be getting into semantics, but the semantics are important. The semantics can mean customers and revenue.

Dynamic content acceleration is like offering your content a toll road. Dynamic content optimization is differentiating dynamic content, and delivering it to the end user through optimized network routes.

The difference is in the approach. To achieve optimization there are many methods and tools you can use.

Here are 6 ways to achieve dynamic content optimization.

Use a Content Delivery Network

The first way to achieve content optimization is to use a content delivery network (CDN). Although a CDN does not provide the most benefits for dynamic content, you will need to be using one if you are serious about optimizing content.

The reason is your content delivery network should deliver static content for improved website or web application performance. This is a common solution, but one that is essential before tackling the bigger problem, which is dynamic content.

As a typical website will have about 25% to 35% dynamic content, you will see drastic performance improvements by addressing your static content speed.

There are many services you can begin with, just perform a simple Google search for “content delivery network (CDN)”.

Static and Dynamic Content Differentiation

The next way to begin dynamic optimization is to differentiate static and dynamic content.

As dynamic content looks different in web and application code, there are many ways to separate the two. Anything from creating different domains for dynamic and static content to creating different instances within Amazon Web Services (AWS). The setup of your dynamic and static content is up to you and your specific business case.

Expand Global Cloud Coverage

In order provide better content delivery, increasing the number of cloud regions you operate in might be the best course of action. There are a few considerations, which Amazon Web Services (AWS) will be our example.

To expand global cloud coverage, there are a few considerations. We will look at three considerations when expanding AWS coverage.

• Instances
• Global Replication
• Pricing

Instances

The first step to expand global coverage is going to be the incorporation of AWS Instances. Instances allow an AWS customer to separate workloads within the AWS framework. Instances allow a user to specify specific requirements for specific applications. In doing this, you can begin to optimize instances which have a lot of dynamic content.

Global Replication

To have content distributed globally, the AWS customer would need to replicate instances across multiple regions. This makes sense for some applications and businesses. An instance does not mean that an application is replicated globally. Global replication is a manual specification.

Price

One of the bigger considerations to this approach is the costs to provide this level of coverage. AWS Instance pricing is on cost per hour of CPU computing time. Prices will run from $0.0065 per hour to $3.394 per hour, depending on your running requirements.

This is just one of the ways to achieve dynamic content optimization.

Use a Web Accelerator

The use of a web accelerator can be a great tool to improve the speed of your website. There are two web accelerators, client side and server side web accelerators.

As a content provider, the server side web accelerator is going to be the accelerator of interest. A server side accelerator will increase the speed of your content through caching, file compression, and prefetching content.

The accelerator helps to increase the speed of dynamic content delivery, which results in better conversion rates, more revenue, bandwidth management, and a better user experience.

DNS Optimization

Another way to optimize dynamic content is through domain name service (DNS) optimization. DNS is a process where communication occurs between a website, web browser and user IP address before loading content.

What this does is specifies the region the user is located in, so that it knows where data should be requested from. This process adds time in the loading of websites and web applications. DNS optimization will decrease the amount of communication needed for this process, resulting in faster communication and downloading.

Optimize Content Structure

The format and code of content can also improve download speed. There are many best practices in development to help accomplish this.

A common way to improve the speed of dynamic content is to use dynamic compression. This is compressing file sizes so they load faster.

How does this work?

When a file is transmitted, it is done so through the transfer of data packets. The larger the file, the more data packets that need to be transferred. Seeing as there are only so many data packets that can be transferred at a given time, the more packets, the slower the content loads.

This is why you would use dynamic compression. File compression will make the file size smaller. With a smaller file size, the fewer packets that need to be loaded. The result is a faster load time.

I know I said we would discuss 6 ways to achieve dynamic content optimization, but I have a bonus. Yes, the 7th way is through the Datapath.io solution.

Bonus: Use the Datapath.io Solution

Optimization with the Datapath.io solution can take many of the steps you accomplished above, and then determine the fastest route to your users. As dynamic content has to be requested from the origin server for every request, increasing the speed that each request travels can improve the overall performance.

This is the Datapath.io solution. By lowering network latency upwards of 60%, this improves the performance of dynamic content.

As more dynamic content is created, optimization is necessary to improve performance and the user experience. Taking a different approach to dynamic content is the path to success.

Article originally published on the Datapath.io Blog.